Hi Andreas, I read your post directed to me and was very surprised, in a sad way. I have posted to game developer forums, newsgroups, mailing lists and IRC channels for many years without ever getting my points across so badly. This was a new thing for me, I hope it will not happen again.
ontoclasm wrote:Quazifuji wrote:(doesn't make sense to call it a Labyrinth if it's linear)
Actually, that's the technical definition of "labyrinth": a maze with only one path and no branching or loops, also called a unicursal maze. Here's a famous example, the Chartres Labyrinth: [...]
You can't get lost, so it's more about making a cool shape than creating a puzzle. Of course, in modern usage we treat labyrinth as just another word for maze, but it certainly doesn't need renaming.
andreas wrote:TAS2012 wrote:1. The argument "a labyrinth really should not be branching" doesn't matter in the discussion if "a branching thing called labyrinth should be in Crawl".
2. The original/mythical λαβύρινθος/laburinthos ....
I think you misconstrued the point of ontoclasm's post, which was not an appeal to tradition to show that a labyrinth should not be branching (i.e., not an ''argument 'a labyrinth really should not be branching''') but meant to defuse the idea that it is inappropriate to call a non-branching structure ''labyrinth.'' His narrow claim about the ''technical definition'' was not meant to show that we should abide by the technical definition (it is obvious that we can always just change the name of the vault, anyway, if really necessary), but to respond to Quazifuji (who I take it was suggesting exactly that linearlizing the vault requires changing the name). Anyway there is no good reason to be sure that the character of the labyrinth in the original labyrinth myth should directly correspond to this feature of the meaning of the word, now.
As I hope can be construed from my post, my intention was similarly to underline that there is no reason to bring the etymology into the argumentation. I felt that with the strong wording of the post ontoclasm really believed that the "technical definition" of labyrinth is a non-branching maze, and perhaps also other people reading that post, even more so since it was made in argument to a post stating the opposite (which would be more true, in the sense that Crawl's labyrinth seems heavily rooted in the story of the Knossos labyrinth).
To be clearer I guess I could have directed my first point more in the direction of Quazifuji, but I didn't bring the whole quote context with me, and it regrettably came to primarily target ontoclasm instead. I am sorry about that. I am though happy that we (me, you, ontoclasm) all seem to agree that the etymology really doesn't have much place in the game play discussion, which was the message I wanted to communicate.
andreas wrote:TAS2012 wrote:So let us just drop that line of argumenttion, mmkay ....
More importantly, please don't be condescending.
And here I was apparently unclear again, this was some intended good humor passing by seemingly without getting noticed, sorry about that.
There was never any intention to be condescending, not to ontoclasm or anyone else, and to be honest I really don't understand what I did to earn that, even after re-reading. The use of the "mmkay" ending was rather the opposite, intended to portray myself and this whole etymological bikeshedding discussion in the light of the Mr Mackey character who famously uses that phrase while famously no one is interested in what he says - to take the edge of things, like a smiley emoticon could have been used.
English is obviously not my first language so that might be the reason for these misunderstandings?
(I would be more interested in hearing if ontoclasm thinks that I misconstrued the statements or were condescending, the post was after all directed to him/her, but I felt that I had to give you, and possibly others, a response because of the confusion/upset I have unwillingly apparently created.)